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Me quoted in Fairfax papers on tax haven use Me quoted by Georgia Wilkins in The Age (and other Fairfax publications) today.
John Passant, from the school of political science and international relations, at the Australian National University, said the trend noted by Computershare was further evidence multinationals did not take global regulators seriously.
”US companies are doing this on the hard-nosed basis that any [regulatory] changes that will be made won’t have an impact on their ability to avoid tax,” he said.
”They think it is going to take a long time for the G20 to take action, or that they are just all talk.”
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Archive for July, 2011

The first asylum seekers arriving after the Malaysian ‘solution’ have been picked up off Scott Reef. They will be transferred to Christmas Island and then sent to Malaysia.

As part of their anti-asylum seeker campaigns Labor and the Liberals, the two parties of the Australian ruling class, have appealed to and reinforced the racism the colonial settler state and outpost of Western imperialism developed and amplified to justify the genocide of indigenous people here and the invasions of foreign lands.

The plutocracy in the United States is divided over the way forward, not in terms of fundamentals but basically as to the best way to continue the shift in wealth from labour to capital and thus address long term stagnant or falling profit rates.

There is little in the political concerns of right-wing terrorist Anders Breivik that would be out of place in Coalition Party meetings or the mainstream media and especially on the shock jock radio shows.

The Parliamentary Greens are sacrificing asylum seekers on the altar of the carbon tax.

There is one hope – that rank and file Greens will join with the left in defending asylum seekers and challenging this despicable refugee deal which effectively outsources the torture of asylum seekers to Malaysia.

If the Greens’ leadership won’t defend refugees in the Parliament then let rank and file Greens rebel and defend them, with the left, on the streets.

The fight against the encroaching extremism of the right and the cloak of respectability the mainstream parties here and across the world give it is the fight specifically against the fascists and their ‘respectable’ legitimisers but more generally to build a genuine socialist alternative.

That means as a first step building an organisation of thousands of workers and others committed to a new society in which the threat of fascism is wiped from the earth for good. Only overthrowing the system that breeds fascism can do that. Only the working class as working class, the millions for example in Australia who produce the wealth of Australian society, have that power.

We socialists want to build an organisation of the most class conscious elements to win a new world. The first step to doing that is to build an organisation that doesn’t sink into the sewer of racism and Islamophobia but which challenges at every step of the way the creeping extremism of the right and becomes strong enough to smash this violent and abhorrent expression of capitalism now and into the future.

No part of the political mainstream–neither conservative nor liberal [JP – reformist] parties–is blameless in the crusade against immigrants and Muslims that shaped Anders Behring Breivik.

But this has also produced revulsion among millions of people horrified by the return of the far right and its ideology–whether in the form of openly fascist parties in Europe or the Islamophobic fanatics who gravitate to the Tea Party movement in the U.S. or the “respectable” politicians on both continents who seek to exploit anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim bigotry.

Turning that revulsion into active opposition is the best way to present an alternative to the hatred and violence of the far right.

As the euro crisis comes to a head, it will only add to the economic and politically instability of a world still reeling from the Great Recession and its aftermath. Those who want to organize for an alternative need to prepare now to meet that challenge.